Qualla: Haaksbergen

Haaksbergen: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tubantia, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the early 1970s, 80 percent of the people working in Haaksbergen worked in textiles. Then, within a few short years, almost none of them did. Cheaper labor abroad collapsed the Dutch textile industry, and the eastern weaving towns - Haaksbergen, Enschede, Hengelo, the whole of Twente - had to find something else to be. Half a century later, the looms are silent, but the town that once spun thread for Europe still sits where it always has, on the Buurserbeek stream in the southeastern corner of Overijssel.

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Image: Tubantia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Haaksbergen: Hockesbeghe

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Calips, CC BY-SA 3.0. Humans have left traces around what is now Haaksbergen since roughly 800 BC. The city itself is younger - the urban settlement dates to around 800 AD - and the first written record appears in 1188, in a register of goods belonging to the same Count Hendrik van Dale of Diepenheim ...

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Image: Calips | CC BY-SA 3.0

Haaksbergen: When the Looms Came

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Deb Collins, CC BY 2.0. The nineteenth century rewrote the town's economy. Textile production took over from agriculture as the dominant source of income, and by the early twentieth century four out of every five working people in Haaksbergen earned their living from fabric. Across Twente, the same stor...

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Image: Deb Collins | CC BY 2.0

Haaksbergen: The Trains That Refused to Quit

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Apdency, Public domain. Haaksbergen used to have a train station with regular service. It sat on the line from Doetinchem to Hengelo, and before the Second World War it carried passengers as well as freight. After the war, the passenger service died first. The line stayed open for freight until 1972 - t...

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Image: Apdency | Public domain

Haaksbergen: The Watermill and the Countryside

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Globe-trotter, CC BY-SA 3.0. Just south of the town, the Oostendorper Watermolen still sits beside its stream - a double-wheeled wooden watermill that has been grinding grain in one form or another since the seventeenth century, and is now one of the visual emblems of the Haaksbergen countryside. The land ar...

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Image: Globe-trotter | CC BY-SA 3.0

Haaksbergen: What Lies Around

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phlanx, CC BY-SA 3.0. Haaksbergen sits at the seam between two regions, and the seam is the interesting part. To the north and east is the rest of Zuid-Twente, with the bigger former mill cities of Hengelo and Enschede. To the south is the Achterhoek - flat, hedge-lined farmland with its own quiet ide...

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Image: Phlanx | CC BY-SA 3.0